Qohel

Make a Difference

Page 58 of 107

Not Bad for Abos

I ended my post featuring Morgan Freeman with the suggestion: ‘if you don’t think race should make a difference, stop acting like race makes a difference.’

So I was interested to read in Qantas’ in flight magazine about how jolly well some of those indigenous football players are doing.

Qantas even has a program to help them along, poor dears. Because, you know, of the extra help they need.

The whole tenor of the article was ‘Oh. you’re black, and you’re good at something. Gosh. Well done!’

This is a perfect example of Ayaan Hirsi Ali calls ‘the racism of low expectations.’

It is promoted by race relations commissioners, social workers and the media. It is applied to Australia’s indigenous peoples and to non-white immigrants.

It is insidious, insulting and destructive.

Climate Vox Pop

I asked three random people (well it’s about as scientific as those polls in the Courier-Mail) some simple questions.

Do you believe the world is getting warmer as a result of human action? Two said yes, one no.

To the two who said yes: ‘What are we doing that is causing the world to get warmer?’

They both answered that we are making too much carbon dioxide, and this is trapping sunlight.

Next question: ‘If you had a box containg 10,000 air particles, how many of them would be carbon dioxide?’

One answer: Half?

The other answer: About 3,000?

My response. ‘Three.’

‘What, three thousand?’

‘Nope, three.’

‘You mean 300?’

Nope, three.’

‘That can’t be right.’

“Go and check it out.’

‘No that can’t be right.’

Ahh, the joyful bliss of ignorance.

Except that, in this case, and often, ignorance does not promote bliss, but uneccessary panic.

There is vastly more water vapour in the air than CO2, and water vapour is a more effective retainer of heat.

The minimal effect of that tiny amount of CO2 is simply swamped by other factors including water vapor.

The even more minimal additional amount of CO2 resulting from human activity causes so little change that it cannot even be measured.

Despite this, everywhere is getting hotter faster than everywhere else, and Mars is getting hotter fastest of all. And it’s all our fault. Except Mars.

Gol darn those irresponsible truck driving martians!

Of course, scientists keep saying we should stop panicking about climate because we can’t do anything about it anyway, and get on with solving real problems, but I still think those martians need to be taught a lesson.

Anti-Semitic, Anti-Gay, Anti-Women

Wow, that George Christensen is anti everything. Well of course he would be, he’s a liberal party candidate.

At least, that’s the impression you might get from this article in the Sydney Morning Herald.

Some of the comments quoted really are obnoxious. Only one of them is actually attributed to Christensen. The rest were in a magazine he edited.

All date from 1998, when he was a university student.

Sorry, when? 1998. Twelve years ago. Christensen was a teenager at the time.

There are a few things to note here. Firstly this was twelve years ago. Christensen was a teenager.

Secondly, some of the opinons expressed by Christensen as a teenager are simply sensible.

Is it really extreme, anti-gay, or anti-women to suggest there is something wrong with using tax-payer funds to pay for a sex change operation for a bloke who thinks he’d like to be a lesbian?

Thirdly, this was twelve years ago, and Christensen was a teenager at the time.

Fourthly, even the most extreme views expressed in the magazine edited by Christensen are no match for the personal attacks, obscenity and sheer nastiness exhibited on an ongoing basis by such left-wing luminaries as Marieke Hardy and Catherine Deveny, without so much as a disapproving murmur from the mainstream media.

Finally, if what you thought at university can safely be held to be what you think now, we are really in trouble with Ms Gillard, who is therefore still a ‘revolutionary leftist’ (her own words), committed to undermining capitalist society.

I feel much more confident that Christensen does not now hold the juvenile views he did twelve years ago than that Ms Gillard does not hold the radical views she did.

Christensen has acknowledged that some of what he said was inappropriate. He says those remarks were made in jest, or to generate discussion. They are not representative of his views now. And he has apologised unreservedly. 

Julia is still to tell the truth about the extent of her involvement in communist groups.

I know who I’d trust first.

This Is Cool

How do caring, intelligent people stop the race problem?

Race commissioners, equality commissars, etc, only have jobs as long as they keep finding racists under the bed, so they have a vested interest in keeping on finding them, and making the problem sound as bad as it can be made to sound.

There may be another way.

This Morgan Freeman talking about ‘Black History Month:’

via Brutally Honest

The moral of the story is, if you don’t think race should make a difference, stop acting like race makes a difference.

Being Julia

I just bought a copy of the Australian Women’s Monthly.

I didn’t want to, but the current edition hasn’t yet made it to the doctors’ surgery, or to the library.

Julia Gillard is made to look very attractive.

There has been a bit of photo-shopping. In the photos, this makes her look younger and softer. In the text, it makes her look more caring and trustworthy.

I asked a random sample of female friends what they thought of the article, and of Julia.

One answered that she was lovely, and it would be great for Australia to have a female Prime Minister, just like it is wonderful that America has a black President.

This respondent is obviously a complete dimwit.

I didn’t point out that Australia already has a female Prime Minister, or that voting for someone on the basis of race is, well, racism. And besides, that’s worked out just peachy for all concerned, hasn’t it?

My two other friends said the fact that Julia is a backstabbing schemer who may have broken up a marriage, isn’t able to solve any of the problems currently facing the government, and seems willing to promise anything with taxpayers’ money to stay in power, is more important to them than that she is a woman.

They weren’t impressed with her domestic arrangements either. How is her consort going to be introduced? Please welcome Mr Tim Mathieson, the guy who’s currently shagging the Prime Minister?

It may sound snobby, but most Australians won’t sit comfortably with the idea of the Prime Minister shacking up at the Lodge with her hairdresser boyfriend.

Is this fair? Should politicians’ personal lives be up for discussion?

Well, yes.

It is important that our leaders be intelligent, energetic, capable. Julia is all of those things. So was Kevin Rudd. So was Mussolini.

Those things alone don’t make good leaders.

People also want to know that the Prime Minister is stable, truthful, compassionate, willing to honour commitments.

If a politician is willing to deceive friends, betray colleagues, lie to partners, make promises he can’t keep, why should voters have confidence he will keep his promises to them?

If the Women’s Weekly really thinks that faithfulness, integrity, stability, and kindness are less important to its readers than having nice hair and a vagina, it has seriously underestimated the intelligence of Australian women.

On Hold

There will be a break in proceedings for an indefinite period.

The last year has been an annus horribilus – Amanda’s accident and ongoing illness, struggles to get my business up and running despite absences caring for family members, and Bruce’s unexpected death.

To top everything off, last week we found that Kathy has cancer and will need major surgery.

At the moment I barely have the emotional energy to go to work and cope with the constant harrassment of running a computer business while still trying to be nice.

I need to give myself a bit of space, and reduce some of the pressure I put on myself to get things done.

I will be back.

Thanks.

DIY Jesus

Ben-Peter Terpstra points out that it is much easier to make up your own Jesus if you have no idea who the real Jesus was.

In fact, if you have never read the Bible at all, and you are talking to other people who have never read the Bible, and have no intention of doing so, you can say what you like without fear of contradiction. Or at least, confident that your worthless opinion has as good a claim to respectful consideration as anyone else’s worthless opinion.

A few years ago I was arguing (politely) with the wife of a Sydney clergyman about the real presence of Christ in the eucharist.

‘But that’s just your opinion,’ she said, meaning that her opinion, or that of anyone who agreed with her, had just as good a claim to truth.

My argument was that this was not just ‘my opinion’ but what the church had taught unanimously until the 16th century. I know the scriptures on this fairly well, and some of the early church fathers. I quoted from John, Paul, and a few 2nd century letters and sermons.

Her response was ‘Well, I don’t care. I know what’s right.’

That was the end of the discussion, of course.

But for liberals (I mean the Labor kind) it is diversity, discussion, the journey, that is important. More important than the truth. Actual objective facts get in the way.

Ben-Peter writes of the Bible:

And that’s why Labor hacks despise it. Don’t teach the New Testament – and the next thing you know Jesus is a vegetarian feminist, driving a hybrid with a pro-gay marriage sticker. Or the Old Testament is just a mean patriarchal manifesto.

If you can make Jesus in your own image, you can claim him (or her, after all, who really knows) for your cause.

So the last thing you want is people reading the Bible, and finding that far from being enlistable in the latest cause de jour, Jesus’ life and words, with their claim to be eternal and objective, demand a response of repentance, a life of serving His cause.

Of course you can always pretend to read the Bible, and talk about ‘the trajectory of the Scriptures,’ which means that Jesus seems to have been an all right sort of bloke, so we can be confident that if he had known what we know, and been as clever we are, he would have thought the things we do.

But once we have allowed ourselves to encounter the real Jesus, making him in our own image is no longer an option. The choice we have is to remake ourselves in His.

Two From Town Hall

If you are interested in US politics, the Town Hall website is worth visiting regularly.

Today there is an article by Michael Medved which asks why big lotto winnings are more acceptable than big executive bonuses. A couple of excerpts:

Why do huge Wall Street bonuses provoke so much more public indignation than similarly gigantic lottery jackpots?

At least financial tycoons can try to argue that their payoffs stem from their own wise decisions or productive hard work. But Powerball winners get rewarded for patently stupid behavior: wasting a few dollars (usually on a regular basis) on addictive games of chance with only the remotest possibility of success.

All studies of government-sponsored games of chance show that they draw their dollars disproportionately from the most disadvantaged members of society. … Lottery losses of just five dollars a week (a common pattern in the nations poorest neighborhoods) could otherwise yield life-changing results (like a compound-interest portfolio that will likely exceed five figures within 20 years) if that money were saved and invested.

Americans can accept a winner of Megamillions who collects $340 million simply because he’s luckier than we are, but we wince at the idea of bankers drawing a similar amount because they’re better connected, smarter, more sophisticated or even more productive.

And Debra Saunders notes that there is pretty good evidence that using a mobile phone while driving, even a hand-held phone, is no more risky than turning on the windcreen wipers:

Last week, an insurance industry report found that bans on using hand-held cell-phones while driving in California, New York, Washington, D.C. and Connecticut did not reduce the number of car crashes. To the contrary, crashes went up in Connecticut and New York, and slightly in California, after the bans took effect.

Insurers are the most risk-averse, nag-happy, fun-killing folks in the private sector. If ever there was an industry that loved nanny-state laws and had nothing to gain in raising information that does not support them, that would be the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.

But its report found that the crash statistics simply aren’t there.

I doubt that will stop the legislators.

Choice Magazine: Loyalty Schemes Cost Consumers Money

No s%#t, Sherlock.

Businesses are not charities. Loyalty schemes are designed to make more money. They make more money by encouraging people to buy from a particular store or chain.

Choice magazine found that consumers need to spend $100 to earn $1 dollar in rewards in loyalty programmes like Flybuys.

You could save that much by walking down the road and buying a single bottle of Coke on special, rather than paying full price at your loyalty card issuer’s store.

Research …  shows to earn a $50 voucher, using FlyBuys and Woolworths Everyday Rewards schemes, customers must spend almost $11,000 at Woolworths and more than $15,700 at Coles.

The findings are based on Roy Morgan Research figures that show in the year to last June, the average Australian shopper spent $156 a week in supermarkets. It would take seven years to gain enough points for a Virgin Blue flight from Sydney to Melbourne using the FlyBuys system, the report claims.

And since points expire after three years, all that loyal shopping and swiping your Flybuys card is not going to earn you anything.

Even if you don’t use a loyalty card, and shop for specials wherever you find them, you are still paying for loyalty schemes, because extra staff time, stationery and other costs of administering the scheme have to be built into store pricing.

A Laugh for a Long Day

Phew!

It has been a long couple of days – back from Bruce’s funeral, trying to catch up at work. It’s good to be busy, but this is getting ridiculous.

Anyway, a couple of totally tasteless ads from the 11 Points blog:

Rectal Christmas Fun

Nothing says Christmas fun like a rectal suppository!

Valentine Funeral Planning

Nothing captures the spirit of Valentine’s Day like ‘Let’s plan your funeral.’

Taxidermy Cheese Store

Try our Gorgonzola while we stuff your pet goat.

School NAPLAN Results

I noted a few days ago that KICE – Kangaroo Island Education, had scored below average results in national numeracy and literacy testing. Results for the year three group were substantially below average. This was when compared with all schools, and with ‘statistically similar schools.’

Kangaroo Island is regarded as remote, and incomes on the island are below national averages.

So statistically similar means poor and remote. Other schools listed when I checked the site were schools with high proportions of indigenous students.

Aboriginal schools are generally recognised as having significant issues in terms of absenteeism and literacy.

For KICE to score below aboriginal schools at any level is an appalling result.

How could this have come about? There three possibilities.

1. Children on KI are unusually stupid.

I don’t think this is so. But there does seem to be an unusually high proportion of students with learning difficulties – particularly boys.

2. Parents do not see the value of education, are not supportive of the school, do not read with their children at home, etc, etc.

This is possibly true. There does seem to be a general lack of recognition of the value of learning.

There is also a high incidence of domestic violence.

I have not seen any studies of  correlation between domestic violence and literacy, but I would expect a strong inverse relationship.

A close friend says her observations while working in aboriginal schools confirms this. Children were often scared of what they would find when they went home, if Dad was drunk, or Mum had threatened to kill Dad in his sleep, or sister had been beaten with iron bars the night before because she was friends with someone the family were enemies of.

Because they were scared the children were not interested in school work, or left during the day to check what was happening, or found other, often unhealthy, ways to cope.

Even in less extreme circumstances, children might be distressed and distracted by unhappiness at home.

But this is not the whole answer. The relationship between KICE and parents seems to be marred by suspicion if not outright hostility.

To give an example, last year a parent wrote a letter to the local paper, questioning the teaching of Indonesian as a second language. The questions were reasonable, and could have been answered in a  reasonable way.

Instead, the principal wrote back to the paper saying he was taking legal advice, and suggesting the parent, and anyone else who thought like him, was a narrow-minded redneck.

This kind of response does not encourage parents and community members to believe they can talk openly with the school about issues.

It also makes the school as whole seem defensive if not irrational, so that parents are less likely to take the word of teachers or other staff over that of their children, and less likely to believe disciplinary measures are being adminstered fairly.

3. The school is disfunctional, or at least, teaching in the early years is or has been very poor.

I met two retired teachers last week. Both had taught for many years on Kangaroo Island. I asked one of them what he used to teach, meaning subjects. He replied ‘little bastards.’ I laughed, and asked whether this was what had lead to his early retirement.

He said it was not. He was used to poor behaviour from students, and lack of support from parents. What had got him in the end was ongoing bullying in the staff room. The other teacher who was with him confirmed that this had also been his experience.

Now let’s just talk in general about disfunctional schools.

There was a fuss in the papers in South Australia a few years ago about a power group of teachers in a public school. They organised timetables so that they got better students and more free time. Difficult classes would be split for them, but left intact for new teachers, who were then belittled if they had classroom management problems.

Teachers were appointed, and office space and privileges allocated, not on the basis of need or experience, but on the basis of who knew who, and who talked loudest about the great things they had done.

This resulted in high levels of tension, large numbers of staff on stress leave, and declining academic results. Senior staff sent to try to resolve the problem were either drawn into the power group, or if they resisted and tried to bring about change, decried as bullies or incompetent, and moved on.

No one benefits from this, except the few who are able to make life comfortable for themselves at the expense of other teachers, students, and the community.

For results to improve, existing problems need to be acknowledged. Power groups need to be recognised for what they are, and deprived of their power. Appointments need to be made on the basis of who is best suited for the position, not who is someone’s drinking buddy.

And last but certainly not least, there needs to genuine and respectful interaction with the community.

More money will not solve the poor NAPLAN results. Better management will.

Rickets on the Rise

Computer gaming and Facebook cause rickets.

Well, no.

There seems to be a a widespread rise in vitamin D deficiency. This could be a lack of sun or shortcomings in diet.

It is a long stretch to say that gaming or Facebook are responsible, expecially when rickets usually starts to appear before age two. Most online gamers and Facebook users are a little older than this.

Even in very young children vitamin D deficiency can be caused by lack of sun as well as diet. But if computer games are not to blame, what is?

Last night I saw on TV a terrifying ad that showed a young man at a beach. As soon as he took his shirt off, deadly rays from the sun struck his skin. As the rays penetrated inside, one skin cell turned black and then began taking over other cells and turing them black. A stern voice said something like ‘A tan is your body’s way of protecting your skin against cancer. There is nothing healthy about a tan.’

This was a government sponsored announcement to warn people that even the smallest amount of exposure to the sun will give you melanoma and kill you. You never know, so it is better to wear a burqa every time you go outside.

That was the message I got, anyway. And incidentally, vitamin D deficiency is a major problem for women in Saudi Arabia.

No wonder people are scared to go outside without ‘slip,slop,slapping’ themselves or their children to the point that not one bit of ultra-violet gets through. As a consequence of which the body cannot manufacture any vitamin D.

Half the advice given by doctors and scientists is wrong and should be ignored.

The problem is working out which half.

My School

I have followed the debate about the publication of national numeracy and literacy testing with interest.

My view, of course, is that parents, the wider community and the government should have as much information as is practicably possible about educational standards, including information about which schools are doing well and why.

The AEU (Australian Education Union), of course, thinks any such plan is reprehensabul, riprahinsable, reprehansbil, bad, because parents might choose to send their children to schools which produce better results. Which means that mediocre teachers might find themselves out of work. Which would be another really inaproprite, unexcaptable, bad thing.

Much badder than children not getting the best possible education, for example.

Over the objections of the AEU, the Federal Government today launched the My School website, which enables anyone to check any school’s NAPLAN test results against the national average, or an average of statistically similar schools.

My nearest school is KICE  – Kangaroo Island Community Education.

The site shows KICE’s results are below average compared with all schools and statistically similar schools at all year levels, and spectacularly below average in year three.

On Friday I will make some suggestions about why this is.

Tony Abbott on Virginity

Tony Abbott was asked a question.

It has been interesting to read the outraged remarks that followed his answer.

The question was  “What advice would you give your three daughters about sex before marriage?”

The answer was ”I would say to my daughters, if they were to ask me this question … it is the greatest gift you can give someone, the ultimate gift of giving and don’t give it to someone lightly.”

It all seems perfectly reasonable to me.

The question was “What would say to your daughters…”

Not “What advice would you like to give to Australian women?”

The answer was prefaced with “… if they were to ask me this question… “

It was not even gratuitous advice to his daughters.

Yet Julia Gillard immediately jumps in to tell the world that ”Australian women want to make their own choices, and they don’t want to be lectured to by Mr Abbott.”

Senator George Brandis quite rightly and respectfully points out that “Julia Gillard who is – has chosen not to be a parent – and, you know, everybody respects her right, in the vehemence of her reaction in fact shows that she just doesn’t understand the way parents think about their children when they reach a particular age.”

But judging from the further outrage occasioned by Senator Brandis’ comments, it is clear the left wing believes Mr Abbott and his personal choices and beliefs are fair game, but Ms Gillard’s are not.

Even more absurdly, leading nitwit, sorry ‘leading feminist,’ Eva Cox says that by encouraging young people to value themselves and their sexuality, and to wait until marriage Abbott “is commodifying women, by saying their sexuality was something to trade.”

Of course, Mr Rudd’s attendance at a New York strip club, where he was reportedly told off for attempting to touch the girls, but was so drunk he claimed he couldn’t remember anything, is an example of non-commodifying respect for women, where trading in sexuality is the last thing on anyone’s mind. Obviously he was only there to get the ladies’ opinions on climate policy.

Then there are the bullhorn bellows of ‘hypocrite’ from the ‘I’ll do what I want when I want and don’t anyone dare tell me I can’t’ crowd.

Is Mr Abbott a hypocrite?

Only in the same way that a bank robber who told a young person tempted to a quick solution ‘That wasn’t the right thing to do. It wasn’t good for me or the people I loved. If I had my time again I would make a different choice,’ could be called a hypocrite.

And here’s the heart of the matter: Tony Abbott is right.

Giving yourself to someone wholeheartedly, completely, emotionally and physically, is something wonderful and precious.

Complete physical giving of oneself only makes sense, can only be really complete and wonderful and joyful, as it is meant to be, when there is also an unreserved commitment of life, love and time.

In other words, in marriage.

You can be a party girl or boy, and have sex with anyone you fancy, because it’s your choice, and everyone else is doing it, and there’s no harm in it, and no one can tell you what to do. Or you can have a deeply fulfilling, faithful, life-time commitment to one person.

You cannot have both.

With increasing age, it becomes clearer that the path of lifetime loving commitment is the one that brings real happiness and trust and fulfillment. That is wisdom that comes from thought and experience, often painful and regretful.

So when parents ask their children to be careful, to treat themselves and their bodies as something precious, and to wait for the love and commitment of marriage, it is not because they want to spoil their children’s fun, nor because they are hypocrites.

It is simply because they care.

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